Joy Koch needed to save her horse, Max, from bed sores. Even with eight to 10 inches of shavings wall-to-wall in his stall, Max would find a way to move the bedding, exposing his hocks, hips, and front fetlocks to the abrasive hard rubber mats beneath him. Joy turned to her husband David, the owner of a large commercial construction company, Koch Construction, in the San Francisco North Bay to brainstorm a solution. The result? ComfortStall® Stable Supply Company.

Searching for the most therapeutic, anti-fatigue flooring system possible, more than 100 manufacturers around the globe were contacted and samples were sent for consideration. Amazingly, most rubber mats tested only three to five percent softer than concrete. Ultimately, the Koches decided to rethink the entire concept of equine flooring and they hired flooring specialists to manufacture a precision foam to Joy and David’s specifications. The outcome is a stall surface that allows stalled horses to feel as if they are walking on springy irrigated pasture.
Joy and David just completed a barn on their own property and she offered to share their experience with our readers.

Kathleen: Joy, you’ve just finished phase one of your own barn. What advice can you offer our readers?
Joy: A lot of us laypeople start and do one little construction thing at a time. The most important thing we did was create a budget, like a business would. You hire a general contractor and do a design-build with him. And get three quotes for everything. We worked with equine facility designer Laurel Roberts. I met Laurel four years ago when she was designing the Stanford facility and she chose ComfortStall® and Deco-Flex and the Windsor Fencing products. Working with Laurel on my project was invaluable.

Kathleen: And what did you learn from the budget process?
Joy: From the animals’ perspective, they could give a flying hoof about shiny brass balls on the stalls. What they care about is the footing: in the arena, in the stalls, in the aisles. Put your horses in a shed row or in pasture shelters to start with and build the best arena you can if that’s what your budget supports.

Kathleen: What sort of choices did you have to make when building your own facility?
Joy: The barn is 64’ x 60’ and I wanted to build at least four 12’ x 16’ stalls. With a bigger stall I don’t need to bed whole stall because the ComfortStall® footing is like a forest with spongy ground or an irrigated pasture: it has give.
Horses don’t like to urinate on themselves because then they are more attractive to prey. So with these bigger stalls they can feed over here and urinate over there. Another benefit of this flooring is that 100 percent of ammonia leaves with your mucking out. Typical rubber mats allow leakage and the drainage system is the first four inches. By comparison, in my barn, even with it being closed up at night, when you walk in in the morning it smells like horses, not urine.
Also, my 12’ x 18’ wash rack is properly done with a 5’ x 9’ walk through examination stock (similar to what you’d find in a vet hospital, but bigger). I learned this from visiting River Grove Farm, where Debbie McDonald trains in Idaho. Things happen in water, even on rubber mats, with soap on the floor and even a layer of slime can build up. Debbie has a 12’ x 14’ wash rack that leads into a smaller metal rack, like two “Hs” cross tied. A big no-no is not having a wall behind a horse in a wash rack. It’s dangerous.

Kathleen: Can you give our readers a sense of the scope of the project of building a barn?
Joy: Certainly. There are a lot of steps involved. We had to hire a soil engineer, and then a general engineer to excavate and re-compact the soil. We needed a design. Laurel Roberts did ours and had it plan checked and stamped by an architect. Then we needed permits, and then there was the structural engineer. We have 12’ eaves so the horses can be in the shade outside. There is an 80 mph wind resistance requirement, so we had to build sheer walls to support the eaves. But it was worth it because, without the wings, it looked like a commercial building.
All the fencing is Windsor all-weather HDPE safety fencing, which has the structural strength of lumber but it is actually a recycled plastic so if it breaks, it will break clean. The cost is about $11 per linear foot for a three-rail fence. Horses can run into it and they bounce back. For a while PVC fencing was popular but it gets brittle in cold weather and shards at any temperature. I’m all about safety so all my fencing is Windsor.

Kathleen: Were you able to do everything in phase one?
Joy: I couldn’t do it all at once without taking a loan out. So I looked at what can I get away with for stage one from pasture shelters to the barn. The next phase is going to upgrade the front of my stalls. I do want the brass balls, but they’re not phase one for me. In the meantime, I went to my friend Bob, the owner of Wine Country Ranch Supply in Santa Rosa. He customized a 16’ length of four-rail fence and then he welded the heavy duty mesh on top, basically making a stall front out of a fence panel. Then we powder coated it. It’s definitely just a stepping stone. I do want to upgrade the front of my stalls to Laake (www.laake.com). These are a beautiful product, a step above the top U.S. products but less money. The stainless steel never chips and it’s gorgeous.
I’m also waiting to put down my own Deco-Flex in the aisle. In the meantime the whole 64’ x 128’ footprint of the barn is base rock and we prepared the barn aisle as compacted road base waiting to do an in-ground, rubber paver installation. Poured concrete costs about $6.50 per square foot and it can be fairly slippery. It may not seem so until a horse really spooks and then he falls down and crushes the handler. I had a horse scoobydoing on me as a kid so I’m really cautious. “They’re fine until they’re not,” is my motto. With Deco-Flex, they will bounce a little bit more. It’s rated for a nine-foot fall on playgrounds for children.
We also have room for four nice 50’ x 200’ irrigated pasture turnouts and I’m waiting on the fencing. I have a perfectly serviceable five-acre pasture so I can wait. Even if it’s me at 8 p.m. at night schlepping the horses back and forth, I can wait. Part of the reason I want the organic compost is that we are in the Chalk Hill Appellation and it’s a lot of clay and rocks and I’d like to use the compost to improve the soil. I don’t want to import 20 truckloads of dirt that can have nails. I’d rather use my own dirt.

Kathleen: What other things did you take into consideration when designing your barn?
Joy: I was perfectly happy with a shed row, but my husband is a professional general contractor and he saw the potential to add to our overall property value by building an aesthetically pleasing custom barn. And he was right. We recently re-appraised our property and the barn added $450,000 value although we only spent half of that building the barn. It’s a great return on investment. Plus, the barn is designed with 14’ walls and high pitch so that if we sell it someone else can use it to store a boat or motor home or it can be turned into a winery or garage for a classic car collection.

Kathleen: What’s up next?
Joy: The manure pile. We’re going to implement the O2Compost system. It’s a great non turning aeration system and all you need is a concrete slab, a roof on top, and three separate bins. Before we started on this project I read Dr. Karen Hayes, D.V.M. How to Be the Perfect Horsekeeper and I took a lot of her ideas. I learned a lot about horse management for the 21st Century. It opened my eyes to big stalls, to separate urine from eating, and composting. I knew we couldn’t build the manure system in January; it’s a summer job, so I put it off a bit. You can even use the compost as bedding. It’s completely neutral and absorbent.

Kathleen: Congratulations on moving your horses home. And thank you for sharing your experience of building a custom barn!
Joy: It’s my pleasure.

For more information on the ComfortStall® Stable Supply Company, contact Joy Koch at 888-307-0855, www.comfortstall.com or by email at joy@comfortstall.com.